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Soviet Union

Which Way Russia?

Socialists have always held that dictatorship, even though it is inaugurated by people who call themselves Socialists, cannot lead to Socialism. Russia is now showing us where it does lead. Hardly anybody but the editor of the Communist Daily Worker, can regard the latest wave of plots and executions as evidence of a healthy condition in the Soviet State. To him it is a simple story of treachery by men in high positions who wished "to place the people of the U.S.S.R. under the yoke of capitalist slavery" (Daily Worker editorial, June 12th, 1937). Happily, the ever-vigilant intelligence service unearthed their dastardly plot and crushed it in the nick of time. Otherwise "they would have wrought incalculable harm to the cause of peace, progress and Socialism." This may satisfy the members of the Communist Party, but nobody else.

G. B. Shaw as a Guide to Socialism

Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, republished in the Pelican Books series, in two volumes at 6d. each runs to nearly 500 pages and includes two new chapters on “Sovietism” and “Fascism.”

Trotsky States His Case

(The Real Situation in Russia, by Leon Trotsky. Translated by Max Eastman. 364 pages. 7s. 6d. George Alien & Unwin.)

This book consists for the most part of the statement submitted by Trotsky (and 12 other minority members) to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party in September, 1927. The document was suppressed by Stalin and his supporters, and the opposition group - both in the Central Committee and in the country at large - was broken up by the imprisonment, persecution and exile of its prominent members. As might have been expected a copy of the statement was smuggled out of Russia, and now appears in an English edition. It is translated by Max Eastman, who is an American admirer of Trotsky, and was himself recently in Russia.

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